Event category: Exhibition

A Fellow of the Society of Designer Craftsmen, potter Pam Schomberg uses porcelain, stoneware, or a combination of both to make marks and impress pattern into rolled out slabs of clay, with made or found tools. Colour is included at all stages, with the use of oxides, slips, glazes and on-glaze lusters.

‘As a potter you feel you know what you are making, but things can change dramatically from when they go in a kiln to when they come out after firing. Nothing is ever quite as expected, there is always a surprise when the kiln door opens and the contents shine back at you…’

For further information visit: www.pamschomberg.com

Inspired by the themes and techniques of our exhibition A World to Win: Posters of Protest and Revolution, each young artist developed their individual response during a week-long project exploring the gallery, meeting artists, curators and designers and learning new printmaking skills led by artist Della Rees.

The result is a resounding endorsement of the creative talent of young people, their individualism and their thoughtful engagement with the world around them. The art works comment on current events including the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox and the media’s relationship to society, while evoking a strong sense of community and an impression of the world as they would like it to be.

An exhibition in the Discovery Lounge, curated by the William Morris Gallery Young Curators Group.

Image: Hey Have Ya Heard? by Khalil

The Fox and the Star is a beautifully crafted tale of loss, friendship and discovery from award-winning illustrator and author Coralie Bickford-Smith. This exhibition will tell the fascinating story of the book’s conception and production, with original illustrations and rarely seen proofs. Taking inspiration from William Morris’s Kelmscott Press, every physical detail of this modern classic, from the cloth binding to the carefully chosen paper, has a ‘definite claim to beauty’.

This exhibition will appeal to all ages, from serious book lovers to families who will be able take part in hands-on activities. William Morris’s Kelmscott Press edition of Reynard the Fox, one of Coralie’s key inspirations, will also be on display.

Coralie Bickford-Smith graduated from Reading University where she studied Typography and Graphic Communication, and currently works in-house at Penguin Books. Her designs for the covers of the Penguin Classics clothbound series have attracted international acclaim and refer back to the world of Victorian book bindings.

In 2015 Coralie wrote and illustrated her own book, The Fox and the Star, which was published by Penguin and won Waterstone’s Book of the Year.

Kindly supported by Fullers Builders, Walthamstow.

Image credit: Thomas Lehman

Each scene in photographer Red Saunders’ work is carefully planned and lit, using costumed models in the style of tableaux vivants (living pictures).

John Ball the Hedgerow Priest, the Peasants Revolt 1380 and William Cuffay and the London Chartist 1842 will be displayed outside in front of the Gallery and light up the entrance. Rediscover their extraordinary stories, and the contribution they made to bring about change.

Supported by Impressions Gallery.

Sheer Pleasure – Frank Brangwyn and the Art of Japan examines Brangwyn’s love of Japanese art and his collaborative relationships with Japanese artists and patrons.

Brangwyn donated his collection of Japanese prints and paintings to the gallery. They have rarely been displayed and the exhibition includes highlights such as woodblock prints by Utagawa Hiroshige and Katsushika Hokusai and a carefully restored decorative screen.

During the 1910s, Brangwyn met the Japanese artist Yoshijiro Urushibara (1888-1953) in London. Their meeting led to a remarkable example of collaborative printmaking, combining the exuberant bravado of Brangwyn’s designs with the subtle and distinctive techniques of Japanese printmaking. The exhibition explores the collaborative process, with sketches, notes and key block prints, as well as displaying some of their most successful works, such as The Devil’s Bridge and the ambitious Bruges series.

It also tells the story of Brangwyn’s relationship with his patron Kojiro Mutsakata, and their ill-fated plans to create an art gallery in Tokyo.

To complement the exhibition, we have invited painter and printmaker Rebecca Salter RA to display her work in one of our first floor galleries. Having studied at Kyoto City University of the Arts, and having lived in Japan for six years, Salter studied the art of Japanese woodblock printing extensively. She creates prints in collaboration with the Sato Woodblock Workshop in Kyoto, one of just a few surviving in an industry in slow decline. Salter’s work offers scope to compare the complexities of collaboration between designer and maker, artist and patron, Britain and Japan.

Supported by the Decorative Arts Society Collection Access Grant 2016.

Image credit: the Estate of the Artist, William Morris Gallery

The artist Clare Mitten’s reimagining of A Factory As it Might Be – William Morris’s vision for how beautiful factories would act as centres of education and creativity – is influenced by Victorian science fiction and bio-inspired technology.

PLANTWORKS explores the relationship of Morris to industrial manufacturing through drawings and paintings of plant specimens, translated into a collection of cardboard models, before transforming back into 2D motifs.

PLANTWORKS is generously supported by the Arts Council and Bow Arts Trust.

Walthamstow School of Art cultivated some of the most influential creative talent of the 1950s and 60s. Leading names in art, fashion, music and film studied and taught here – including Pop Artists Peter Blake and Derek Boshier, musician Ian Dury, filmmakers Ken Russell and Peter Greenaway, and fashion designers Celia Birtwell, Marion Foale and Sally Tuffin.

The exhibition will explore this radical era at the school, showing the early work of these seminal artists and designers and revealing how they were encouraged to explore their creative imagination, taking art and culture in radical new directions.

This incredible era at the school has never been explored or researched in depth, despite the fact that all the leading players cite their time in Walthamstow as key to their later development.  For the first time, the early work of these influential artists and designers will be brought together in one exhibition, to show how it was in the art schools of post-war Britain, rather than the universities, that the benefits of a free, universal secondary education were most evident.

The exhibition will capture the energy, excitement and dynamism of these young artists, teachers and designers as they first started out in their careers. The exhibition will reveal personal testimony and original work created by the pupils and teachers during their time at the school, as well as personal photographs and archival material, film, music and ephemera from the period.

This landmark exhibition explores the life and work of May Morris, the younger daughter of William Morris and one of the most significant artists of the British Arts and Crafts movement. May Morris: Art & Life is the most comprehensive survey of May’s work to date, bringing together over 80 works from collections around the UK, many of which have never been on public display.

May Morris: Art & Life has been funded through Art Happens, the Art Fund’s crowdfunding platform.

The exhibition will coincide with the publication by Thames & Hudson of May Morris: Arts & Crafts Designer, which is co-authored by curators at the William Morris Gallery and the V&A.

Gayle Chong Kwan’s The People’s Forest is an exhibition of new photographic and sculptural work exploring the history, politics, and people of London’s ancient woodland, Epping Forest.

The exhibition is the culmination of Chong Kwan’s two-year engagement and research investigating the Forest as a liminal threshold between rural and urban, as a site of historic and recent protest, as a shared and contested resource, and the conflict between capital and common.

Recent exhibitions at the gallery have emphasised Brangwyn’s international connections; his interest in Belgium, his journeys through Europe and South Africa, and his passion for Japanese art.  But these interests are reflective of the opportunities offered by London, the city in which he lived.

This display focuses on Brangwyn’s relationship with the capital; where he learnt his trade and how its energy drove his work.